Further, the present invention relates to a transfer sheet for an adhesive layer, particularly a transfer sheet, for an adhesive layer, which can conduct temporary bonding and separation a plurality of times in bonding a transfer material to a different material through an adhesive layer transferred onto the transfer material, an image-forming method using the transfer sheet for an adhesive layer, and an object, with an image formed thereon, and, an intermediate thereof, that is, an intermediate image-forming object, formed using the transfer sheet for an adhesive layer.
A melt type thermal transfer system and a sublimation type thermal transfer system have hitherto been used extensively as a thermal transfer system. In the sublimation type thermal transfer system, a thermal transfer sheet comprising a substrate sheet, such as a plastic film, bearing a dye layer formed of a binder resin with a sublimable dye as a colorant melted or dispersed therein is used with an image-forming object comprising a support, such as paper or a plastic sheet, bearing an image-receptive layer, and energy corresponding to image information is applied by means of a heating device, such as a thermal head, to transfer a sublimable dye contained in a dye layer of the thermal transfer sheet onto an image-receptive layer of the image-forming object, thereby recording an image. According to the sublimation type thermal transfer system, the amount of the dye transferred can be regulated on a dot basis by regulating the amount of energy applied to the thermal transfer sheet, enabling tone reproduction by taking advantage of density gradation. Further, since the colorant used is a dye, the recorded image has good transparency and, at the same time, the reproduction of an intermediate color created by superposition of colors using a plurality of dye layers is excellent. Therefore, a high-quality, full-color image can be recorded by using a thermal transfer sheet(s) for three colors of yellow, magenta, and cyan or four colors of yellow, magenta, cyan, and black to superpose these three or four colors on top of one another on an object.
In the formation of an image by the sublimation type thermal transfer system, an image can be formed on image-forming materials having various shapes by once forming an image on an intermediate transfer medium having an image-receptive layer and transferring the image-receptive layer, with an image formed thereon, onto an image-forming object. The formation of an image using the intermediate transfer medium by the sublimation type thermal transfer system, however, often suffers from a drawback that the adhesion between the image-receptive layer and the image-forming object in its image-forming surface is unsatisfactory. In this case, it is preferred to transfer the image-receptive layer onto the image-forming object through an adhesive layer.